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CoC and Honesty

Rizzo

Well-Known Member
In recent events I have had the unfortunate chance to witness dishonesty on the part of two of our members. Honestly is a virtue that I happen to value so naturally this bothers me deeply. To be clear, THIS IS NOT A DISCUSSION OF THE RECENT SITUATION OR SIMILAR INCIDENTS.

What I wish to get the community's opinion on is whether honesty is a topic that our Code of Conduct should touch on. I'm sure that all of us have felt burned at some point in our life when a dishonest person told us a lie, lied about us, or went back on a deal. As a hobby I wish to enjoy SARP free of those situations and I'm sure that I'm not alone so I state my questions, but please feel free to elaborate on the subject if you wish.

1. Should the CoC specifically prohibit dishonesty in addition to its prohibition of dishonest behavior found in line 2?

2. What form of consequences or penalties should be in place to prevent dishonest behavior in our community?
 
I prefer it when people are honest with each other but it's also important to remember that people change their minds sometimes. In other words, just because someone told you something before, doesn't mean they feel the same way now. For that reason I don't think it's Star Army's place to "punish" people simply for being inconsistent about promises made and this is more of a personal thing between you and that person.

This is an RP site for fun and sometimes people find that what they thought would be fun isn't so they switch things up and do something different instead. On the other hand, if someone is lying to deliberately cause drama, that's already covered in the rules, because OOC drama isn't fun either.
 
While I sympathise with the premise, "dishonesty" is such an umbrella it's like saying "harm". People could abuse the lack of definition of what does and doesn't constitute "dishonesty" to get people into trouble.

If you accidentally exclude some information by forgetting about it and someone calls you out for being dishonest how is that resolved? Surely the only person who can tell for sure it's malicious or accidental is the person who was allegedly dishonest?
 
I appreciate this feedback, and definitely still wish to see what everyone else feels on the matter since nothing currently is being proposed or decided on.

@Ethereal you raise a very valid point. For the sake of the current argument raised I should clarify that I am specifically referring to deceptive behavior and not human error. The two are generally easy to differentiate though I agree that cases may arise where it becomes difficult to tell.

@Wes We should too raise a good point about one changing their mind, however when this is the case there is generally more civil dialog rather than lies to accompany the occasion. Additionally, false accusations waste the administration's time and can damage reputations. I have seen it happen where this is the case, the lies were numerous, public, and obviously intended to cause harm and when the Staff member pointed out their deception the slanderer basically just shrugged it off and said oops. The slander circulated and the source of the lie walked away.

In that scenario I'm sure we can both agree that is not the experience we want on SARP and yet despite the drama it caused there were no consequences faced ICly or OOCly. This tells me that there is no protection for the accused party though you would know better. Perhaps you could explain how a person in this situation could handle this type of problem for a just outcome?
 
OOC actions should not, in my opinion, lead to IC consequences (and vice-versa), as past events have shown that mixing IC and OOC together usually never ends well and causes extreme amounts of drama.
 
Of course, Frost. The situation I was pointing to is one that Wes would be aware of and the lying party in that case was specifically trying to get out of the IC consequences for their IC actions by making a long list of OOC accusations that were completely false. I do agree that IC and OOC should be kept separate.
 
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